The Harvard Five

The Harvard Five

2025 / 60 min / US

Director: Devon Chivvis

The Harvard 5: A Story of Love, Architecture, and a Design Revolution reveals the little-known story of five groundbreaking modernist architects and designers who sparked a revolution in the unlikely setting of New Canaan, Connecticut. 

Philip Johnson, John Johansen, Landis Gores, Eliot Noyes, and Marcel Breuer emerged in the years following the Second World War with a bold sense of hope and a belief in the power of design. Their avant-garde ideals and radical homes, often mocked as “Kleenex box houses,” stunned the residents of this traditional New England town. 

Despite initial resistance, the Harvard Five found New Canaan to be an ideal canvas for applying Bauhaus principles to American life. What began as a local experiment grew into an intellectual and architectural movement that transformed the community and impacted modern architecture worldwide.  (ADFF)